


The Better Unheard

by FatalCookies



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 16:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5935360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FatalCookies/pseuds/FatalCookies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The words they said and the hope they had.</p><p>(A series of drabbles prompted on Tumblr, which all related to one another. Ranging in time from Rebellion-era to present day.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Rebel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired off of the prompt, "things you said when we were on top of the world."

The outbreak of war on a colony world heralds the return of Blue Diamond to the home planet. The usual meetings are made. The Diamonds gather, they talk, the efforts expand and all goes, as far as she can see it, much as it ever does. 

Not that there’s ever been rebellion of this kind before—or perhaps of any kind, ever—but the Diamonds are strong and do not tolerate insubordination. What infractions do pass go on under their sight and are much the same as the gems that commit them: small and inconsequential.

But the Yellow Pearl at the side of Yellow Diamond notices something else in this, the first of many meetings to come. It is that the Pearl at the side of Blue Diamond holds her hands a little tighter, her back a bit more stiff—everything about her, wound up, like she might burst. She notices. A Pearl has to notice.

As the meetings progress, the Diamonds leave their Pearls at the door, and only then, when they are alone, does Yellow Pearl dare to open her mouth about it. She’s not even gotten a word out before the Blue Pearl snatches up her wrist, her lips twisting up in excitement.

“What?” Yellow Pearl demands, indignant, shoulders lifting.

Blue lifts a quick, darting hand, and presses her fingertips tight against Yellow’s lips. Yellow makes another indignant noise in the back of her throat, but says nothing, curiosity quickly overwhelming the ugly sense of impropriety. She’s never seen the Blue Pearl like this—she’s never been so energetic, so engaged.

“What?” she asks again, a whisper as Blue takes back her hand. Blue gestures, a come-hither of her hand, and then a gentle wave for quiet. Yellow would scoff, but she knows herself well enough to know that she is loud, as Pearls go. Some Diamonds demand quiet, some demand immediate answer, and she knows herself and to whom she belongs. She bites her tongue and looks, as the gem on Blue’s chest glows, and then projects.

The image makes no sense. 

Yellow stares, and again as the projection plays over again. By the time the second play-through has ended and Blue—wisely—decides to cease before someone has the chance to see, Yellow is standing with her mouth slightly agape, her lips tight and her shoulders rigid.

“A _Pearl—_ ”

“Shh,” Blue breathes. You do not need a voice to hiss through your teeth. Yellow Pearl tightens up another fraction and tries again.

“A _Pearl_ ,” she furiously whispers _._ “A Pearl—fighting? Are you absolutely cracked, this couldn’t have—we aren’t meant for—”

From beneath a veil of hair, Blue Pearl cracks a smile that stretches wide and wider, until she grins. And Yellow, she understands. The tight hands and the wound-up mannerisms—Blue has seen something impossible, and even second-hand, Yellow can feel it too. She’s never felt so much outrageous possibility in all of her years.

Blue says nothing. She never does.

But then, in the face of such possibility, the knowledge speaks for itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was originally posted on Tumblr and can be found [here](http://fatalcookies.tumblr.com/post/138805500208/any-two-or-three-pearls-of-your-choice-21).


	2. The Persistent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired from the prompt "things you said when you were scared."

And then there comes the news. The war is over. The rebels have been neutralized and everything is back as it should be. 

And Blue Pearl is still playing the projection.

At first, it’s like—it’s like a memorial or something, it’s like remembering briefly the death of something that is irreplaceable (not common, but not unheard of) and Yellow takes it with some amount of patience. It’s a memory hard to let go. That’s… she can make sense of that.

But a century goes by and still, there are times when the Pearls are left outside of the rooms, and Blue motions with her gentle for-once-unclasped hands, and gestures everyone near into a tight circle, until all you can see is a faint glow between their huddled bodies. 

At first, Yellow did not huddle because she felt it was the others that should see. Now, she doesn’t do it because the continuation makes her grit her teeth, and clench her hands. She calls it anger. She’s angry, she tells herself—because she _knows_  what anger looks like. It is an expression she has trained herself to see in its starting stages, it’s the emotion she has learned to dodge in others. Anger means tight-clenched fingers and narrowed eyes, lips pulled out at the corners and stiff shoulders. It means dangerous, fast-moving hands.

After two centuries, the effort it takes not to grab Blue and shake her by the shoulders is frankly herculean. 

And three centuries in, there is something about it, the fact that the door has not even slipped wholly closed behind the Diamonds and their court, but Blue is already reaching for another Pearl—a lilac—and _the door is not even closed_.

Blue doesn’t make her reach. Yellow grabs her before she can manage.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she hisses. “Are you _trying_  to get yourself crushed? The least you can do is wait half a second longer, until you’re properly out of sight—!”

Blue purses her lips, apologetic. But Yellow doesn’t let her go.

“The _least_  you could do—” she reels, surprising herself at the extent of her fury, surprised at the words that fly from her like she’s been carrying them in too long, “—the absolute _least_ , would be to take that! Just a second! Bad enough you’re already trying to see yourself early to recycle—and you’ll bring about a bad name for all of us, everyone you show—!”

The hair before her face sways as she lifts her head and shoulders, so clearly taken aback. She tries to gently remove her hand from Yellow’s grasp, to no avail.

“Do you _get_  it? Can you get it through that pathetic little head of yours—!” 

She’s never been so mean, but she can’t seem to stop.

“—It’s been centuries! She’s _dead_! The Pearl who fought is dead, crushed to bits or worse, and if you’d take a moment to _look_  for a change instead of hiding behind that damned blinding _veil_ of yours maybe you—you—or maybe you’re just too _stupid and illogical_  to get it! She crossed the Diamonds and she’s dead—and shouldn’t that be a lesson to you? The longer you keep this up the more likely you are to be caught! You _will_  get caught and you are going to _die_  because you’re too—absolutely—!”

Yellow knows what anger looks like. She knows because there is another feeling, one that jumps wildly around the inside of her slender frame like static electricity, and settles inside her like the mass of a planet pulling down to a gravitational core—dark, pressured, heavy—there is a feeling she gets when the starting signs of anger appear on her Diamond’s face and she knows this feeling too and—she—

Yellow chokes on a furious sob, and drops Blue’s wrist to clasp her hand firm upon her mouth. Tears fall and settle between her fingertips. And oh, stars, she is _scared_.

Blue bites her lip, and reaches for her, but Yellow slaps her hand away.

“You absolute _fool_ ,” she hisses. “You’ll _die_  and you’ll make it worse for _all of us_.”

Blue shakes her head, reaches again, but Yellow once more darts out of her grasp. There are other Pearls here, staring, and Yellow becomes suddenly, acutely aware of them—and has she been too loud, and do they now know, and who will they tell and what will they tell—? 

The terror grows like gravity inside her, and she feels as though she might break in upon herself and die, here and now.

Knowing better this time, Blue doesn’t reach. She curls her hand into a fist instead, and taps once upon her chest, just beside her gem, before her fingers relax, and then brush the rise of opalescent blue beneath her collar. She turns her head until she is looking at the unknowing, startled Pearls around them, then back at Yellow; she opens her hand, wrist to her chest, fingers spread around her gem as though to guide the projection.

“You don’t have to tell them,” Yellow hisses, frightened and stubborn. “You don’t have to tell _anyone_  anymore. It’s over.”

Blue repeats the motion. A tap on her chest, before cradling her own gem in her fingertips.

“But it isn’t so important that _you_ have to—”

And there’s the crux of it, isn’t there? Yellow freezes, staring at this gem who, she reminds herself sternly, is _not_ important. 

Blue’s lips part suddenly, before pressing sadly together. One last time, she reaches for Yellow, and one last time, Yellow bats her away.

“Do what you will,” she tells her hotly, “but I’ll have no part in it.”

She turns her back, and crosses her arms to hide her shaking hands. After a pause, she hears shuffling, and at the first hint of glow, she closes her eyes firmly against it. 

–

Yellow Diamond is the sort of gem who demands answers. 

Yellow spends those three hundred years and the next several centuries simply making sure that her Diamond never has reason to ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was originally posted on tumblr, and can be found [here](http://fatalcookies.tumblr.com/post/138809727253/18-things-you-said-when-you-were-scared).


	3. The Flaw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired from the prompt "things you didn’t say at all."

The rebellion seems like a thing of the distant past—an inconsequential blip on the radar, there and gone like nothing at all. In the centuries that follow, everything settles back into its place. The Diamonds are less aggravated and do not meet half as often.

There are one or two brief meetings, in which Yellow Pearl does not even deign to look at the trinket by Blue Diamond’s side. And after that, it is a thousand years before they have cause to meet again.

The doors open before Yellow Diamond, beckoning entrance, and for exactly two seconds, the Pearl is terrified to see another shape, another shade, another _gem_  at the side of Blue Diamond, and what will have happened and who would have told and was she crushed traded recycled or—?

The door opens and the precise shade of blue stands with her veil of hair and her clasped hands.

Yellow Pearl’s lips tighten, and she lifts her chin high, and keeps her gaze averted.

–

The habit is borne of their last meeting, and the habit holds, still. Yellow Pearl does not look. Not even when they are left outside of the discussion halls, not even when it is only them two—not even when Blue Pearl pulls a hum from her useless throat. Yellow Pearl does not—absolutely _will not_!—look at her. 

Which means she does not see, in so many words, the way Blue Pearl finally gives up, turning her head forward and dropping her chin, hair swaying forth, a ludicrous aesthetic of less-practical gems passed on to impractical underlings and utterly frivolous servants. 

Again, she doesn’t see it. She just… catches it in her periphery.

She can’t help _that_. You _have_  to notice, being a Pearl.

–

Five centuries later, all the Diamonds gather, and discuss, as they are like to do. Formality’s sake, surely. Some gems share certain friendliness between them, when they share circumstances and standing. The Diamonds share no such things. They are strong and alone and logical—all of them, though her Diamond most of all. 

They are more perfect than the rest, and it is almost like an honor to be made in the image of one. And if Yellow Diamond praises her Pearl for her high chin and her demeanor which echoes her—then—surely it is an honor and a privilege, and a praiseworthy thing, to stand alone.

(That is—surely, it is an honorable thing, programmed in from the start, and even if she _could_ pick it—and she _would_ —it would be the smart thing, the right thing. Standing alone.)

She keeps her chin high and does not look at Blue Pearl.

(She does notice that Blue does not show the other Diamond’s Pearls the projection, but then—it’s been years. Perhaps she finally gave up on that silly, dangerous notion. Perhaps she finally grew a sense of self-preservation. Perhaps some Pearl finally went and knew too much and was—but then at least it wasn’t—)

Thinking these things, it is the only time in that whole affair of meetings and discussions when Yellow Pearl dips her head without the proper cues from their Diamonds. 

(She sees in her periphery, when Blue Pearl turns her head so slightly, clearly noticing the brief change in demeanor. It is also the only time in all these goings-on that Yellow is angry at herself, instead of at some nameless someone else.)

–

Yellow Diamond has little patience for the gentle, subtle mannerisms of her Blue counterpart. She more frequently makes time for her other ilk, and so it is more often the others that find their way into her company.

Yellow Pearl catches herself, once or twice, and always in private, picking at the edges of her gem with unhappy fingertips. She always stops herself; she hates idle fiddling and won’t be seen to exhibit such nervous inefficiency, as though she were some other Pearl, some lesser make belonging to some lesser gem—some Pearl whose image was made after someone less dignified, less logical. Like her Diamond, she, too, can have no patience for illogical yammerings and fretful idleness. 

Like her Diamond who is great, so she exhibits some echo of the same.

There’s pride in a thing like that. Nothing more.

– 

Yellow Pearl keeps her eyes down. Her Diamond has been sitting in relative calm for nearly two thousand years. 

Everything is fine.

–

Everything is fine.

–

Everything is—

–

(This feeling building up inside of her, that makes her pick at the edges of her gem as though she could unearth it from her physical projection—? It’s hopelessness. 

She wouldn’t have named it at the time, but that projection, and the feeling, the possibility that it represented? That sensation upon seeing a Pearl doing things no Pearl could ever have done, defying in a way no Pearl was ever like to do again—? The feeling, then, was hope. Blue and her projection—it gave her hope for a thing she couldn’t name. 

And now, they are not speaking, and now, they are not even _seeing_. Anything could have become of her in these years, there is no way to know–and everything was lost and everything is still slipping out her fingers and—

She picks at herself, as if she can unearth the defect from her. As if she can pluck out the flaw. As though, if she just tries hard enough, she can remove this excruciating feeling, and go on with her delicate, tightrope walk of an existence.)

–

Then, quite suddenly, Blue Diamond requests immediate audience with Yellow Diamond, regarding the ongoing plans Yellow Diamond had set in place for the far-off planet where rebellion had been seen so long ago. She comes, and she  brings her Pearl—still the same Pearl—along with her.

This time, Yellow Pearl looks at her. This time, she dips her head and holds her gaze, and she doesn’t say it, but her entire posture bespeaks apology, and begs, oh, it _begs_  for acknowledgement in return.

(The fact that her contrition is shown, not said, and the fact that it is done beneath the sight of their own Diamonds, when Yellow had once snatched Blue’s wrist for a mere cracked door…)

It is so, so subtle. But Pearls _have_  to notice; Yellow sees the barely-there tilt of Blue’s chin, and then, the even-more-quiet turn of her lips, that suggests the want of a smile. And just like that, it is as though the planets have found their orbit, and the stars, set to burning a little slower. 

Just like that, it is as though her whole world starts over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was originally posted on Tumblr, and can be found [here](http://fatalcookies.tumblr.com/post/138820917473/5-yellowblue-unless-pearlshipping-only-means).


	4. The Impossible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired from the prompt "things you said with too many miles between us."

Several thousand years later, a Peridot stands up to Yellow Diamond, denouncing her, cursing her to her very face. 

And more importantly, several thousand years down the line, a Peridot _lies_  to Yellow Diamond. 

(She should know. She lets her voice and tones carry the lie that she is a fraction as valuable as the gem that owns her. Every step she takes tells one, falsely, that she has never stumbled and never will.  She walks every day with the lie that she hasn’t seen the impossible.)

(She doesn't know what the Peridot lies about, but there is more to the story. She feels it down to her very core.)

Yellow Pearl has no taste for Peridots. They are a snotty, snippy, single-minded bunch. But once, maybe five, six thousand years ago, she saw an impossible thing, a Pearl holding swords in each her hands, moving like the star’s light across the sky—and today, again, she sees another. Today, a small, runt, nothing of a tech clenched her little fists and defied the greatest power the gems have ever known.

She called her a _clod._

(There was a time when such a notion was too great for her to grasp. She remembers so well—she remembers staring slack-jawed. Today, she did, too—and she flinched out of fear, and felt panic prickle in her fingertips. She has rarely seen Yellow Diamond so angry—

Her temper has not cooled and Yellow Pearl is terrified, she does not feel safe, she is the _opposite_ of safe in times like these… but she’s something else, too, underneath it all. In a slip of a world made of order and precarious balance, something like willful and righteous insubordination is as powerful as a supernova. It could knock the planets off-course. It gives her _hope_.

There was a time, too, when she didn’t know what to name it, when someone else gave her hope.)

–

Yellow Pearl is terrified and doing all she can to avoid notice. But she is terrified even more of perishing with this tidbit of knowledge still lodged inside her, silent, small, and unshared. 

And so, when Yellow Diamond calls her fellows, leaving her Pearl to scatter somewhere outside her sight, Yellow Pearl goes straight for the command controls, and with shaking hands, hails the command center of Blue Diamond.

(She makes her bets that, like her Diamond, Blue Diamond will be communicating through her direct line, with other calls left to taper out as she sits through the plans laid out by Yellow Diamond, or at least, as much of the plans as Yellow Diamond will give She will leave her main control center unattended, and her Pearl, dismissed from the room, will be there. Not to answer, never to answer, but there.

And she _might_  answer.)

The seconds feel like short eternities. But—because it is a time for impossible things—the line picks up. The communication opens. There stands the Blue Pearl, her lips parted, her hands properly clasped. 

They tighten when she sees who has come to call, though she must have known already, or, Yellow thinks, she would never have answered to start.

“You’ll never believe it,” Yellow Pearl says, her tone brought down in volume a touch in a way it not often is. Blue tilts her head; Yellow, realizing she has been gripping her gem in one hand, as though it might burst, uncovers it.

She plays the projection, and watches Blue’s mouth drop softly open.

And Yellow feels the vindication, the smug satisfaction—the _hope—_ course all through her. She smiles, wider and wider, until she is grinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was originally posted on tumblr, and can be found [here](http://fatalcookies.tumblr.com/post/138825854553/15-pearlshipping-any-pearls-of-your-choice).


End file.
